Justin Angelo In May, we wrote that the New York Department of Financial Services ("DFS") would soon be issuing revised debt collection regulations for debt buyers and third party debt collectors. On July 16, the DFS released the revised proposed regulations. Among other things, the revised proposed rules would require a debt collector to substantiate not only... More &#62;

Press Release FDIC Issues Guidance to S-Corporation Banks Regarding Basel III Capital Conservation Buffer FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 21, 2014 Media Contact: Andrew Gray (202) 898-7192 angray@fdic.gov The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is clarifying how it will evaluate requests by S-Corporation Banks to make dividend payments that would otherwise be prohibited under the Basel III capital conversation buffer. On April 8, 2014, the FDIC finalized new Basel III capital rules. These rules include a capital conservation buffer which prohibit or limit the amount of dividends a bank can pay when its risk-based capital ratios fall below certain thresholds. The capital conservation buffer will be phased in during the years 2016-2018 and will be fully effective in 2019. Federal income taxes of S-corporation banks are paid by its investors. If an S-corporation bank has income but is limited or prohibited from paying dividends as a result of the new rules, its shareholders may have to pay taxes on their pass-through share of the S-corporation's income from their own resources. Because of the nature of the capital conservation buffer phase-in, the FDIC does not expect this S-corporation tax issue to present itself in specific cases for several years. Nevertheless, to address the concerns of S-corporation banks, the FDIC is clarifying certain aspects of the capital conservation buffer as it applies to S-corporation banks. The Basel III-rule contains a provision allowing any bank to request approval from their primary federal regulator to make a dividend payment that would not otherwise be permitted by the capital conservation buffer. The regulator may approve such request if warranted based on safety-and-soundness considerations. Absent significant safety-and-soundness concerns about the requesting bank, the FDIC generally would expect to approve exception requests by well-rated S-corporation banks that are limited to the payment of dividends to cover shareholders'...

It's been four years since Dodd-Frank Act was signed into law. On the anniversary of this sweeping overhaul of financial regulations, Republicans have released a report that argues the law falls short on one of its main tasks.

Treasury 10-Year Yields May Slide on Ukraine, FTN&#39;s Vogel Says Bloomberg Benchmark Treasury 10-year note yields may fall to the lowest level in more than a year in a sharp escalation of turmoil over the downing of a passenger jet by rebels in eastern Ukraine, FTN Financial&#39;s Jim Vogel said. "We could get down into the low 2.30s&nbsp;...

by Chris Marshall, National Housing Conference NHC's Center for Housing Policy will begin researching the combined housing and transportation (H+T) costs of low-income households (those at or below 50 percent of area median income (AMI)). To do so, Center staff is capitalizing on data from HUD's Location Affordability Index (LAI). The LAI predicts housing and transportation costs for different geographic levels in 942 Core Based Statistical Areas (covering 94 percent of the U.S. population). The cost estimates are for 12 different household types, ranging in estimated income from a two-worker family to a single, very low-income person.&nbsp; This is not the first time the Center has researched H+T costs. In 2006, we partnered with the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) and the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC-Berkeley to produce A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families . The report documented how moderate-income households were making trade-offs between housing and transportation costs. The Center and CNT partnered again in 2012 to produce Losing Ground: The Struggle of Moderate-Income Households to Afford the Rising Costs of Housing and Transportation . This report examined the H+T burdens of moderate-income households in the 25 largest metro areas in the U.S. Center staff is excited to use data from the relatively new LAI, as it builds on previous housing and transportation cost tools (see CNT's H+T Affordability Index ). Using the data, however, requires that one acknowledge some limitations. Chief among these is that housing data is from the 2006-2010 American Community Survey. A third-party review says that "house prices within and between cities can change drastically over a few years, and using data that is, on average, four years old creates a significant risk that estimates are not accurate." Related limitations include the use of older mortgage data (thereby not reflecting the...

Barbara S. Mishkin On Wednesday, July 23, 2014, the House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing entitled "Assessing the Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act Four Years Later." (Today is the fourth anniversary of the date on which the Act was signed into law.) Most notably, the witness list includes former Congressman Barney Frank, who formerly chaired the... More &#62;

Default rates on loans guaranteed by Veterans Affairs (VA) are consistently lower than on loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). For loans originated in 2007, the worst origination year, 36 percent of FHA loans have experienced at least one delinquency of 90 days or more, compared with only 16 percent of VA loans, [...]

There is a group of folks who believe that inflation is much higher than the numbers in the official reports. Paul Krugman calls them "inflation truthers." In the 2000s, I might have been considered part of that crowd. I recognized that inflation data wasn't being reported accurately, and said as much. I coined the phrase "inflation ex-inflation" to show the absurdity of reporting inflation data without food and energy prices, which were rising fast then. Owner's equivalent rent, hedonic adjustments, substitution all were rightly criticized as flaws in the consumer price index model.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Economic activity decelerated in June, according to the Chicago Fed national activity index released Monday. The index edged down to 0.12 in June from 0.16 in May. This is still the fourth month above zero. A reading of zero is equal to trend growth. The index is a weighted average of 85 indicators of national economic activity. The three-month average slowed to 0.18 in June from 0.33 in May.

Drones are coming to real estate. Indeed, they&#8217;re here now, you can easily find examples of their use online, and that raises some questions: Are they safe? What about privacy? Do you want someone&#8217;s drone flying over your nicely-fenced backyard? Drones are hot &#8212; 43 states introduced some type of drone legislation in 2013 according [&#8230;] The post Should Real Estate Drones Be Banned? appeared first on OurBroker .

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The market is complacent about the geopolitical risks flaring up across the globe, according to Mohamed El-Erian. The former chief executive at money manager Pimco said in a CNBC interview on Monday that while recent events in Ukraine and Gaza are tragic, the market does not believe they will have spillover effects across the world. "The market says even if there are spillover effects, it doesn't matter. Earnings are strong and the Fed is there," he said. "I think there is notable complacency in the market as to how much worse it can get. It has been rewarded in the past, so investors are conditioned." Nonetheless, El-Erian said the risks are heightening due to radicalization in global conflicts.

Prospective home buyers are confident that they'll be able to find an affordable mortgage, but they're thoroughly overwhelmed by the amount of information they have to wade through. Here are 4 ways to get the problem under control.

HILSENRATH'S TAKE Last year's taper tantrum is starting to look like a little footnote in bond market history. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes dropped below 2.5% last week. This is remarkable given the fact that U.S. job growth is heating up, inflation readings firming and the Federal Reserve has said affirmatively that it plans to stop buying U.S. and mortgage bonds by October

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